Hi. I'm going to ask you to raise your arms and wave back, just the way I am -- kind of a royal wave.

You can mimic what you can see. You can program the hundreds of muscles in your arm.

Soon, you'll be able to look inside your brain and program, control the hundreds of brain areas that you see there.

I'm going to tell you about that technology.

People have wanted to look inside the human mind, the human brain, for thousands of years.

Well, coming out of the research labs just now, for our generation, is the possibility to do that.

People envision this as being very difficult. You had to take a spaceship, shrink it down, inject it into the bloodstream.

It was terribly dangerous. (Laughter) You could be attacked by white blood cells in the arteries.

But now, we have a real technology to do this.

We're going to fly into my colleague Peter's brain. We're going to do it non-invasively using MRI.

We don't have to inject anything. We don't need radiation.

We will be able to fly into the anatomy of Peter's brain -- literally, fly into his body -- but more importantly, we can look into his mind.

When Peter moves his arm, that yellow spot you see there is the interface to the functioning of Peter's mind taking place.

Now you've seen before that with electrodes you can control robotic arms, that brain imaging and scanners can show you the insides of brains.

What's new is that that process has typically taken days or months of analysis.

We've collapsed that through technology to milliseconds, and that allows us to let Peter to look at his brain in real time as he's inside the scanner.

He can look at these 65,000 points of activation per second.

If he can see this pattern in his own brain, he can learn how to control it.

There have been three ways to try to impact the brain: the therapist's couch, pills and the knife.

This is a fourth alternative that you are soon going to have.

We all know that as we form thoughts, they form deep channels in our minds and in our brains.

Chronic pain is an example. If you burn yourself, you pull your hand away.

But if you're still in pain in six months' or six years' time, it's because these circuits are producing pain that's no longer helping you.

If we can look at the activation in the brain that's producing the pain, we can form 3D models and watch in real time the brain process information, and then we can select the areas that produce the pain.

So put your arms back up and flex your bicep.

Now imagine that you will soon be able to look inside your brain and select brain areas to do that same thing.

What you're seeing here is, we've selected the pathways in the brain of a chronic pain patient.

This may shock you, but we're literally reading this person's brain in real time.

They're watching their own brain activation, and they're controlling the pathway that produces their pain.

They're learning to flex this system that releases their own endogenous opiates.

As they do it, in the upper left is a display that's yoked to their brain activation of their own pain being controlled.

When they control their brain, they can control their pain.

This is an investigational technology, but, in clinical trials, we're seeing a 44 to 64 percent decrease in chronic pain patients.

This is not "The Matrix." You can only do this to yourself. You take control.

I've seen inside my brain. You will too, soon.

When you do, what do you want to control?

You will be able to look at all the aspects that make you yourself, all your experiences.

These are some of the areas we're working on today that I don't have time to go into in detail.

But I want to leave with you the big question.

We are the first generation that's going to be able to enter into, using this technology, the human mind and brain. Where will we take it?

Christopher deCharms
Brain researcher
Christopher deCharms is working on a way to use fMRI scans to show brain activity — in real time. Full bio
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Vocabularies

Foreignthinking is a game, not a test. However, some people just want to verify what they did is correct or not,
not want to challenge themselves. That's why we have this new learning style.

Lazy mode is an efficient way to learn English. If you want to try it, please be our contributors as below~

How to see more learning materials for free?

In order to make this study camp keep growing, from May 2017, we decide to show learning materials for people
that are welling to provide at least "one" learning material for other people. You can be our contributors with this link:
How to create a new learning material.

The [BBC] [English at Work] series is also invisible in the home menu but will be displayed on the facebook fan page.
Other BBC series, or new learning materials after May 2017 will not be displayed on home menu or facebook fan page.

It's also good for you to learn English while you are doing it.
You will have abilities to analyze English paragraphs
and to compare the difference thinking way with your mother language.
So, it's definitely good to have a try.

Just keep learning, sharing, and having fun~

Gaming: Think in English

Find pleasure with your fingers! Here are some tasks that can help you think in English.
As an English learner, just take it easy and keep playing these games every day.

Step 1: Video

Watching the video in this article.

Step 2: Prepositions

The usage of prepositions is the key point to write graceful English sentences.
Click the blanks to help you deep learning into the usage of prepositions. Try this:

Well, Bob Russell was telling us about his work on nanotubes in his research at the microscopic level.

Step 3: Echoing method

Echoing method is an easy way to improve your listening and speaking.
After you listen a sentence, let the voice echoing in your mind before you speak it out.
You can play echoing method with
button, or
Echo mode option.
For those long sentences, you can use word-buttons as below to help you make it.

Step 4: Thinking method

Take a glimpse of the sentence to help you recall what happened in the video and what each character was thinking.
Then, reorganize this sentence in your mind and use your fingers to arrange words in a correct way. Like this:

The first word of this sentence is "Well," and the second word is "Bob". You can really play it after this guideline.

Step 5: Vocabularies

Define your own vocabularies withReview a word checkbox.
And then, you can play a game to test those vocabularies, same as you are playing prepositions.